We love the goods in hand too late

Cyril said: For it is always somehow slack and fallen back toward desire of the goods in hand, and it does not much long for the things of which it would have the power. But if there should be a calling-over to the other side, and it is allowed to be overcome in the bright things it would have, then at last it barely perceives, after suffering, what it ought to have beaten off with every strength, and not to have let the assault come through trial, cutting it off beforehand.

Palladius said: True.

Cyril: It is necessary, then, and wise, and of the things most profitable of all, to cut off well beforehand the wretched things and the assault of unwanted bondage, and to try to turn away swiftly from the things which, if we should come to a trial of them, we shall lie in every evil.

Palladius: It is so.

Cyril: And if the yoke of necessary slavery should be brought upon us from divine anger, and also the need to come down into a reprobate mind, it is not easy to stand against it. But I would say it is useful, at least, only to keep remembering from what things into what we have been turned, and to lament bitterly the overlooking, and the scarcity of the help from above; 'for the grief according to God works a repentance unto salvation not to be regretted.' And when divine anger is not hung over us, but it is possible, in our power, to choose and to do what seems good, and to possess still somehow loose and wholly unforced the swing both ways — I mean the one toward what is cheap and the one toward the good — we must refuse with a firm heart the softness as in a cheap and low life, and I think we must love to shake off the pleasures at the enemies' hands, and the doing of things under enemies' power, who are said to rule this age. And even if something should come near that is not without worldly good days — I mean the good days honored in the world — it turns in every way to a shameful and ugly end.

Palladius: How have you said?

Cyril: Do you wish us to speak, taking from ancient examples?

Palladius: Very much so.

Cyril: When a famine was wasting those throughout almost the whole land, those from Jacob thought it good to come to the Egyptians; and they were young men, some ten in number, and the aim of the journey abroad was to buy foods, and there was nothing else. And when they had come to this and were at last recognized as brothers, Joseph then giving grain and ruling the Egyptians, Pharaoh received what had been done toward them, 'And Pharaoh said,' it says, 'to Joseph: Say to your brothers: Do this: Fill your wagons, and go away into the land of Canaan, and taking your father and your belongings, come to me, and I will give you of all the goods of Egypt, and you shall eat the marrow of the land. And you, command these things, that they take wagons from the land of Egypt for your children and your wives, and taking your father, come, and do not spare with your eyes your vessels; for all the goods of Egypt shall be yours.'